Name: Apparel & Accessories Unpacked
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T19:16:10.124Z
Duration: 52 min 12 s
Description: Apparel & Accessories Unpacked

Transcript for "Apparel & Accessories Unpacked": Hello, everyone. Good morning. Let's wait for our other panelist to join us, and then we'll get started. Let's see. We're just waiting on Brian. Oh, there's Brian and then Adena to join. Awesome. Okay. Cool. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to apparel and accessories unpacked. My name is Krista. I'm a senior partner manager here at Shipbob, and I'm excited to sit down with some of our top partners today to talk through some tips and strategies to scaling your apparel and accessory brand in 2025. Before we begin, I'd love to know who's in the audience. So maybe feel free to drop maybe a link to your brand in the chat and where you're, tuning in from. I always love to see that. And while we see those answers filter in, I will pass it off to the panelist to introduce themselves. Michael, we'll start with you. Hello, everybody. Michael Klonoff here from AfterShip. I'm a senior tech partner manager out of, San Francisco. Really excited to be on the panel today with everybody. Awesome. Karina, you wanna go next? Yes. Hello, everyone. My name is Karina Shaheen. I am with customer and AI and CRM for customer service. I am actually out of South Lake Tahoe right now. So anyone who's in the area needs a fun bear story, let me know. I got plenty for you. I love that. Brian? Hey, everybody. My name is Brian Baumgartner. I'm a senior director of growth over at Northbeam. We're your first party data application solution for all things performance marketing. I also write the media buyer newsletter, which has about 15,000 subs and a lot of really cool data. So go over to northbeam.io and sign up for that. And I'm calling to you from, Harlem here in New York City. Awesome. And last but definitely not least, Adena. Hi, everyone. My name's Adena Merabi over at Okendo. We are a customer marketing platform helping brands with their reviews, quizzes, loyalty referrals, and surveys strategies. I'm excited to be on the panel today with my fellow amazing speakers, and, don't hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn. Awesome. Okay. Cool. Well, let's get into some questions here. First one, we know that running an apparel brand is not getting any easier, and brand owners have to think about managing extensive SKU catalogs, optimizing returns, keeping up with rising costs, and now this year, navigating the evolving tariff regulations. And so what are some of the most impactful steps apparel brands can take now to protect their margins and prepare for long term stability? I will start with you, Michael. Yeah. Thanks. So I think there's a a couple things that's get stand out here on what you can do. One, you're you're gonna really gonna wanna look at optimizing your post purchase experiences. So if you're an apparel brand, right, you can significantly reduce your WISMO tickets or where is my order, those types of inquiries by, you know, implementing branded tracking with proactive notifications. I think a great example of a merchant who's doing this today, AETREX, they saw, like, a 74 reduction in Wismo tickets after they implemented after ship, tracking. The second thing would be streamlining returns. So automating return rules and and offering people self-service to your return portal really helps cut down on manual labor, and really improves that efficiency of, like, the reverse logistics there, which ultimately will help you from a margin perspective reduce the cost per return. And, same merchant, for this example, Aetrex saw 70% reduction, in their return management costs and a 50% reduction in their operational costs by reducing that manual workload. It also helps to reduce errors. So so those are my two recommendations. Definitely. I know we know on the fulfillment side how tough returns can be. Brian, how about you? Yeah. So I would say, the biggest challenge that we see, frankly, in performance marketing exclusively is measurement. So I I can't tell you how many times I'm sitting around and talking with people at conferences or whatever, and they're like, yeah. We ran some budget, but we couldn't really figure out what was working in our paid social or better or whatever. And we know we need to do it, but we just can't do it profitably. That's getting worse and worse and worse. So I can say anywhere from 50 to 75% of your ad spend is probably wasted if you're not using first party data. On top of that, I recommend that you focus your marketing on profitability first. Right? So, unfortunately, table the table stakes now is having good first party data, an independent set of data from what you're looking at on the ad platforms themselves, which is gonna allow you to be a lot more efficient there. Those are the new table stakes if you're trying to grow in performance marketing on Meta right now and trying to stay efficient, save those margin, protect those margins, and reduce your waste. Awesome. And, Karina, what about from the customer point of view? Yeah. I think this is such a huge topic of conversation right now. I'm sure we're all hearing about it so much. And, obviously, with the rising cost and trying to navigate tariffs, it's been really difficult. I'm kinda touching on, I guess, both things that Michael and Brian said a little bit, but we do feel that, in order for, you know, brands today to really balance margin protection with the need to remain agile, and customer centric, you have to do it through a couple different ways. One, AI driven support automation. So really offloading some of those routine inquiries. You kinda touched on this, Michael, but, you know, like order status, return, sizing, WISMO, everything like that. Offload that to AI agents, that just reduces the cost per interaction and really allows for human agents to focus on high impact issues. Another part of this is customer segmentation. We know that not all customers are created equal, so target loyalty programs and incentives to those high LTV segments rather than just discounting broadly. Definitely. And how about you, Adena? Yeah. I think that, you know, during these unprecedented and sort of unpredictable times, you have to really double down on customer retention. You need to leverage your existing community of customers, especially ones that are loyal to you, through reviews, referrals, and loyalty programs. We know that high quality reviews build trust and they really do drive conversions for your brand. A lot of brands are averse to showcasing reviews, but actually, it's really important to have those. We know that 99% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchasing decision. So a strong review, presence and robust reviews on your PDP can meaning meaningfully boost on-site conversions. Loyalty programs also build or or play a very critical role in, building your customer lifetime value. So make sure that you have features like VIP tiers, exclusive perks, saved for some of those higher tiered members, achievement based badges, which is a fun way to kinda gamify your loyalty program. And that just gives your customers more reasons to stick around, more reasons to come back and use those incentives. We know that 43% of shoppers say they spend more with brands that they're loyal to. So during times of uncertainty, you know, you really wanna make sure that you're, building that loyalty with your with your customers. And lastly, I'll say that, you know, referral programs are another really powerful lever. Customers are four times more likely to buy when they are referred by a friend, when there's that social proof and that credibility. So turning your happy customers into brand advocates can really lower those acquisition costs at the end of the day, especially with rising acquisition costs. Yeah. Definitely. I know I'm I'm in that boat of not purchasing without seeing some reviews, so definitely an impactful tip for brands. And on the fulfillment end, definitely diversifying your fulfillment to reduce the shipping cost and also shipping times. Apparel shoppers expect fast and affordable delivery. So by distributing your inventory across multiple fulfillment centers, especially in areas close to your customer bases, can cut last mile costs, speed up the delivery process, and just overall improve those conversion rates. With our growing global fulfillment network, Shipbob makes this easy and allows you to meet those fast shipping expectations at a low cost and hopefully help there with the margins. Awesome. Onto our next question here. So how can apparel and accessory brand owners and operators leverage data to make smarter decisions this year? So any strategies that you'd recommend they implement now before peak season? And, Karina, we'll start with you on this one. Awesome. We love data. So making these smarter decisions, I think, comes down to having as much data in one place as possible so that you can get all those insights that you need and truly unsilo your data. Unifying CX, your order details, different channels, all of your client data in one single place really make sure that you're, serving your clients a lot faster. So a couple things that I think right now were for me is top of mind that we need to keep in mind is anticipating some of those inquiries. And you can do that by reviewing historical peak season data, like, what were the top contact drivers, what issues caused those delays. And from there, you can build out AI flows or knowledge articles just to deflect those coming up in, like, q four. Performance dashboards, we love these. Everyone everyone has a performance dashboard no matter what you do, but set up those real time dashboards to monitor CSAT first response time and then peak, volume surges. And you can adjust your staffing or bot workflows accordingly to all of that. And then last but not least, the, voice of customer analysis. So you can really go through mind support conversations for quality, product quality feedback, delivery pain points, or some missed expectations. And then that can just help inform merchandising and supply chain planning for the future. Yeah. Definitely. I'll chime in here on the fulfillment, and I know I just mentioned the inventory placement to really strategize getting those, the products closer to your customers. You should should also be using some sort of performance analytics dashboard to monitor SKU performance early to track what's driving revenue, what's sitting in storage too long, or what items are selling out too quickly so that brands can, you know, start thinking about bundling slower moving items and doubling down on best sellers or just adjusting purchase orders now instead of during q four. Michael, how about on the aftership end? Yeah. I mean, kind of echoing what you mentioned and also what Karina mentioned on on the data side is huge. I mean, one, you're gonna wanna use your delivery performance, analytics and, like, benchmark data here. So as you're going to this peak season, make sure you understand your carrier reliability. Like, our package is getting there on time. What are what are the on time rates? What's the average shipping time, the transit time? Then you're gonna once you know this, you can reallocate your volume to kind of optimize and optimize speed, reduce SLA violations during peak season. Like, this helps you kinda shore up. And then you can actually use insights from AfterShip and our dashboard to compare, like, performance across those carriers, countries, or even, like, skews to make proactive, decisions. And, there was a brand called SmartBuy Glasses that saw a 28% reduction in your average transit time by taking these factors into consideration. And I think the other thing is you're gonna wanna track your return reasons. Like, are you connected to your, you know, customer support types of questions? Can you categorize and analyze those return reasons? So making sure you have integrations that are connecting that and feeding you those those, analytics. Is it about sizing? Is it about quality? Maybe is there a high incidence of damaged items? You know, use those insights to help you refine your product design, your descriptions, and your QA processes before the next big drop or the next big sales period. And then, of course, lastly, you're gonna wanna identify high return products or sizing issues and then adjust your inventory, or your product pages, accordingly. This will help prevent, you know, costly returns and improve more, like, conversions. So definitely the under the hood stuff, but really important. Definitely. And how about you, Adena? Yeah. Now is the time to really tap into zero party data, and use that to drive smarter, more personalized marketing. I think personalization is really important right now, with tools like Okendo quizzes, reviews, loyalty surveys, and referrals. You can gather much more valuable insight and zero party data around your customers, like their, size that they typically purchase, their body type, maybe their height, their motivations to buy, like, what occasion are they buying from, and use that to better inform your personalization. So for example, when you think over this data into your preferred marketing tool across email and SMS, you can use that to build segments, that are high performing email campaigns tailored to specific customer needs. So for example, if I'm sending an email to myself and I say, hey, Adina. Here's a really great, new shirt for petite women. If I identify as that because I've indicated that through the review or through a survey or a quiz, I'm much more likely to open that email because it it seems tailored to me. So very important to to create those, deeper personalization strategies. I also think post purchase marketing attribution surveys are a really great way to understand which channels are driving the most, sales or which ones are driving the most traffic. So you can really double down on which channels are high performing. You can even use different kinds of surveys like CSAT, which is great for customer service and customer support with customer or net promoter score surveys to understand the overall customer experience of your website and your purchasing, journey, and better inform future CRO strategies. And then lastly, I would say on the product side, like, you always wanna be understanding how your customers like your product, where can you improve, what are the gaps, you know, how can you iterate on it, maybe a new drop with new styles or something. So don't overlook the review content either. And and don't be afraid to run surveys asking your customers how they like your product or how you can improve it. That is a very valuable piece of feedback, and it can really help inform your your product road map or your product feedback loop. Definitely. And, Brian, I know NorthBeam is one of the go to places for all these data insights, so we'd love to hear from you as well. Yeah. We've talked a lot about, operational and, like, post purchase stuff to improve, and these are all things you need to do, right, to be able to handle the volume of what you're gonna get in q four during your peak seasons. What I wanna talk about is how do you even get that volume in the first place. Right? So if you're running performance marketing of any kind, what's happening right now is you're building your awareness. You're building your retargeting audiences. This period of time, the the slow ecommerce time through the summer all the way up into q four, everybody's going on vacation, not too many people are purchasing. We know that consumers are spending their money on things like sunscreen and, you know, ice cream cones at the at the boardwalk. This is a perfect time for you to be doing aggressive, cheap, creative testing, to be building that awareness so that when you finally do hit people with the message in q four, like, hey. We're running this discount or, hey. We're doing this exclusive drop for q four. Get on the list to be the first person to get it, blah blah blah. People are gonna be primed enough to actually buy. Now how do you runs any sort of awareness testing and understand, I I want new customers, I want returning customers, whatever it may be. That's gonna be first party performance data. So what I tell people right now is the parable of the best time to plant a tree. The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. The second best time is right now. The best time for you to have turned on first party performance marketing data measurement was the moment you spent your first dollar on performance marketing. If you can't do that, the best time is to start right now because when q four rolls around, you're gonna have this incredible view into, number one, what ads throughout the year and what messages throughout the year have been resonating with your customers, striving them to purchase, what channels are working for you. So that when q four rolls around and you're like, alright. I wanna spend a bunch of money to push my sales. I wanna grab people who are ready. You know what ads are working, you know, what products are working in those ads, you know, what channels you need to be advertising on, and you can actually create the volume of sales that all these other optimizations are gonna help you handle. And then everything is just gonna line up nice and perfect. Right? So I think it's really easy for us to look internally at our our operations and be like, oh, there's chances to improve here and improve there. But for so many of the people here, and I know for many of the people in this chat, performance marketing and growth marketing in general, running meta ads is an enigma. Right? And turning north to them now is gonna help you understand exactly how your ads are performing, where they're performing in the awareness funnel. And it's gonna be better, more accurate. The conversion tracking is just makes way more sense than if you're trying to use Google Analytics or just looking at TikTok ads manager or meta business manager on your own. So, the second best time was the moment you spent your first dollar, or the first best time was the moment you spent your first dollar. The second best time is right now. Definitely. I love that taking it a step back. Okay. Cool. Onto our next question. So for brands with frequent drops, limited edition collections, or seasonal peak spikes or peaks, staying agile without losing efficiency is key. And so what advice do you have for managing SKU complexity or increased volume while still delivering a seamless customer experience? And, Adina, we'll start with you on this one. Thanks, Krista. So, you know, managing drops or multiple skews and the complexity there doesn't have to come at the expense of your customers and their experience. Tools like Okendo AI review summaries can help shoppers quickly understand product sentiment, without having to scroll through hundreds of reviews and read through what your customers are saying. We also have an amazing feature called grouping. I will say, like, most your reviews platform should have that available. If if they don't, come speak to me. But grouping the grouping feature allows you to display reviews from similar products on a single PDP so that your customers have access to more of those reviews, more insights. And that really does reduce the decision making friction. So if you're doing one off drops, let's say, a new t shirt design or, a special collab, let's say, but it's similar to the one you did a month ago as far as, like, it's a it's a t shirt, so it's similar to the other t shirt you dropped. Group those reviews, allow your customers to read through what other customers are saying. That really does help, increase on-site conversions. And even when you're launching new new styles or variants. Definitely. Corina, how about you? Yeah. No. Those are such great points, Adina. I agree. I feel like having all these frequent drops, limited editions, collabs, or all these things shouldn't really, you know, have an issue when you're trying to deliver a great customer experience. And being with customer, I'm obviously biased towards always creating these amazing customer experiences, but this is just another point of getting all of your data into one place. So with customer, for example, Shopify data and other third party app data with all of our partners I'm speaking with on this amazing panel today lives inside of the customer platform. So agents or AI agents can really pull in more accurate info into all of their conversations, just to get ahead of any kind of negative experience that someone might be experiencing. Alongside of this, there's a lot of different things that you can do. So self-service that also understands your catalog, you can make product specific FAQs that are dynamically visible based on what a customer purchased or is browsing. That will help reduce confusion and really improve NPS. And then smart routing. So automatically escalate issues for high ticket or VIP order to, senior agents. That is ensuring a really great white glove experience and service without slowing down the rest of the queue that can be handled by, AI or maybe just other agents. I love that. And, Brian, we'll pass it off to you. I think my recommendation would be to think about the way you market your products and your specific drops from, like, kind of two lenses. You'll hear me talk a lot about if you see me on other webinars or on my LinkedIn. You hear me talk about, not relying on one specific way of analyzing your performance. I mean, you have a toolbox of of marketing and and analytical tools available to you from correlation analysis to regressions to media mix modeling to MTA. You kinda have to use them all and be a scientist so you can understand how these specific limited drops are working for you, whether it's good, whether it's bad. I know you're gonna be looking at being like, oh, we're doing a great job. We sold out of this. We made it. We sold out of it. We made this much profit on it. Fantastic. How much incremental profit could you have made if you'd made more of them? If you'd spent a little bit more on your performance marketing, or if you'd spent a little bit less? These are the kind of questions that you should be thinking about in order to help you maximize your new customer acquisition off these funky funky drops. Right? So my recommendation is to think about it in two separate ways. There's finding opportunities to scale the products that are best selling. So the things that work really well for you that maybe you they are drops, maybe they're not, maybe they're evergreen things that you have. But then also consider what products sell best from a marketing perspective. So do you have products do you have specific drops that absolutely crush it for you in all of your paid marketing, but don't necessarily make a big drop in the bucket in terms of your overall revenue? How does that influence your your growth as a brand? How does that influence the sales on other products? Right? Just chilling here. We built a tool specifically for that called product attribution that helps you do this kind of merchandising and understand the relationship between your best selling products and your most effective products in your marketing because those might not necessarily be the same thing. So, go back now and ask yourself that question. Like, did we have things that worked really well in ads that maybe we need to move into a more similar product line, or do we have drops that we need to spend more or less money on advertising, and so on and so forth? So think about those as two separate questions when you're analyzing your performance and planning the kind of drops, skew management, whatever might be going on. Right? Yeah. Take a look at that. I love the distinction between the two. That's a great strategy. And, Michael, how about our AfterShip? Yeah. And Some really excellent points brought up here. And I also saw a question in the chat that kinda relates to this, you know, just to kinda read it back real quick. Yeah. I think it was from Simon. We have an awesome fan base who love their brand. 40% of their customers got to know it through word-of-mouth, and they have a referral program. But it hasn't had that ton of lift. How can we help, you know, get these links out? And I think all these kind of things kind of are coming together to a point, here that relates to this question. Right? I think it's about branded tracking, reducing friction for buyers. So when you're looking at these kinds of referral programs, right, a seamless post purchase experience means, like, fewer customer tickets and increased loyalty, which I think ties to that question, you know, even during, like, a high volume period. So how can you do this? It's, you know, putting if you think about it, what are the most, like, open emails that happen, like, as somebody is buying something? It's it's typically on, like, post purchase. Hey. Your order is tracking. You're very likely to open those. So inputting, pathways for customers to shop or, hey. Your package is on the way. You know, refer a friend and get a discount on your next order. Like, these are all ways to help tie all these kind of strategies together. I think one brand that I mentioned earlier who's really good at doing this as well as as SmartBuyGlasses, they had a 70% improvement in net promoter score after implementation. So they're really looking at that post purchase journey. And then, the other kind of piece tying into these, like, limited drop kind of, seasonal spike, types of opportunities is your returns automations at scale. So when you're dealing with more SKUs, your work your return workflows have to be very smart. So you're gonna wanna have rules based on, you know, item category, price, or, like, return reason. And you're gonna wanna be able to, like, instantly approve these things or flag them, ensuring, like, speed and control in this process. And Aetrex saw a 141 improvement in NPS after implement implementing, like, some of these kind of strategies. And I think, lastly, setting very clear delivery expectations in this process is really key. And you can use AI powered estimated delivery dates here on those PDPs and, on checkout even to set those right expectations and reduce, like, friction at purchase. So you could kind of tie this all together and and think about the overall customer journey and how are you driving this behavior across all these really, really key aspects from fulfillment to customer experience to reviews. Like, are you incentivizing all these things? And in the post purchase process, there's absolutely a way to do that. Definitely. And on the fulfillment and I think that ties in really well with a lot of points you made, Michael. First thing you wanna plan for flexibility, of course, not just volume. So with Shipbob brands can scale fulfillment up or down across our global network without having to over invest in a fixed infrastructure. For example, one of our brands, Beachwaver, who maybe some of you have seen on TikTok, they're big on TikTok live. They use our warehouse management software in their own warehouses throughout the year. But then during peak season, they send inventory to some of our Shipbob fulfillment centers to take advantage of our additional space and to avoid having to hire temporary workers. So I think leveraging a flexible supply chain and fulfillment structure is really important. But also, tagging it back to kind of what Michael said, making sure your fulfillment center or solution is integrated with your tech stack, your customer service, like customer or, your tracking, like your post purchase alerts, letting them know exactly what's going on with the order, and automating that process because during peak season, obviously, that's a lot to manage. And so making sure your customers aren't wondering at any point what's going on with their order and you're being proactive in that post purchase, window really makes that customer experience seamless as well. Alright. Our next question. So as apparel and accessory brands grow, what are some common challenges they face, and what are your tips to overcome them? For this one, we'll start with Brian. So I know that everybody on this call has probably been like, yeah. I tried running, Facebook ads, and they were just really expensive, and they didn't work. The number one piece of advice I would have in terms of solving that problem is you're looking at the you're looking at the wrong data. If you are right now experiencing situations where you're trying to reconcile your conversion counts across your meta ads, or your TikTok ads, or Google Google ads, all of them being like, yes, we drove a conversion, but you actually only see one conversion, you only see one sale. You can't know exactly what experiments are working and what to what to change and what adds to scale and which ones to cut back. So if you're dealing with that challenge and you're dealing with expanding the new channels, you're struggling to advertise on Meta, you're struggling to advertise on TikTok, you can't see what's working, you need to get yourself some sort of first party data attribution solution. I know I keep saying this in this call. It's also basically, the table stakes for you to grow profitably using performance marketing. If you're doing everything else on this call, you're doing all of your post purchase, you're optimizing, you know, your your your supply chain and everything else, then the one lever that still needs to be pulled is you need to get your product in front of new people and tell them that they need to buy it. And the only way you're gonna do that profitably in a way that actually makes sense and shows you numbers that make sense, is if you're using some sort of attribution tool and reconciling the journeys across all of your various marketing channels so that it makes sense to you which campaigns are working, which strategies are working, and which ones aren't. I don't know how you can you can start out on any sort of growth marketing these days that are paid without wasting money unless you're using some sort of first party data. So, this is not really a replacement for anything else that we're talking about on this call. It's more like the the forward facing piece, the new customer acquisition piece where a lot of what we're talking about today is about getting your house in order. And if you can get those two two things together, that's how all these big brands that are out there are scaling right now. So, it's not necessarily a you problem. It's not. You might have a fantastic product with a fantastic your customers love it. It's a fantastic USP. It makes a lot of sense. You have wonderful creative. But if you don't have a good way of measuring any of that performance, you can't you can't run the right experiments to scale and and get your stuff in front of the people who are gonna actually buy it. Definitely. That's so, so important. Adina, I will pass it off to you. Thanks so much. Definitely agree with all those points, Brian. Important to collect data around your customers. We like to call it zero party data because you're collecting it directly from the customer themselves through the view or the quiz or survey, etcetera. But we see apparel brands facing year and year over. So every single year is high return rates, especially when shoppers aren't sure what size or style to work. Best way to combat that issue is by collecting and showcasing that zero party data, like height of your customers that I bought from you, body type, usual size. You know, for other types of brands, it could be, like, skin type, hair color, eye shape. So just customer attributes that describe your customer, and allow your new shoppers to use that to inform their purchasing decision. Often shoppers will read through reviews and look for people with with similar characteristics to them. And so when your new customers see how your product fits people that look like them, they're less likely to order and return. We know that if a customer is new to your brand and you're not collecting that information, they'll likely purchase two sizes of your product or maybe a couple different variants, with the full intention of returning the ones that don't suit them or don't fit them. So definitely recommend that. Another growing pain is helping first time buyers navigate your catalog. A product recommendation quiz is a great way to guide those shoppers to, the right products for them. Creating that guided experience not only reduces friction, but it also allows you to collect that zero party data, which you can then use for deeper deeper personalizations, down the line. Awesome. Yeah. I definitely resonate with the looking for someone that looks like you. Like, I need photos or videos and to avoid the return process. So definitely love that. And, Karina, how about you? What are some common challenges you see on the customer service end and some tips to overcome them? Yeah. These are all really great points, but some things that some friction points I've heard repeatedly, are one, like fragmented systems. I think growth often outpaces the tech stack maturity for a brand. So, honestly, just invest really early in integrated platforms or continue to do those evaluations as you know that your brand is scaling and maybe you haven't done an evaluation in a long time. See what else is out there. Specifically with a CX platform like customer that scales with you, you know, consolidating your email, chat, social, and SMS, and all of your third party data. Not to mention all the powerhouses on this webinar with me, but really ensuring you are using a tech stack that grows with you, I think, is super crucial. Inconsistent customer experience, I think, is another one. And I'm so passionate about customer experience and how just, like, really great positive experiences can help, mitigate a lot of what we're talking about. But using AI to enforce brand voice and quality across all channels, especially if you have global agent teams or BPO partners, But really also making sure you're you're not looking at customer support as a cost center and more of a way to increase that lifetime value of a client and ensure that you're not just having a one time buyer, but people that are coming back time and time again. They love your things so much that they are referring it to all their friends, and it is very word-of-mouth. And you're just creating these really great positive experiences because of all the data that you have and the integrated tech stack that you have along with it. So important. On the Shipbob and fulfillment end, we a common challenge that we see is inventory visibility breaking down. And, you know, as brands grow across different, channels or rate like, locations and regions across the world, they often lose that real time insight into what's in stock, where is it, and how fast is it moving. And so by managing inventory from one centralized dashboard, brands can get a live view of inventory even across multiple fulfillment centers or countries. And we also see that manual processes do not scale. So, you know, what works when you were at a 100 orders a week does not work with 10,000 orders. And so Shipbob helps growing brands automate that order routing, inventory placement updates, and reporting so you can easily stay focused on growth of the brand instead of getting buried in the back end work of managing the fulfillment and where should inventory be and how many SKUs should be at each location. And then, Michael, I'll pass it off to you. Yeah. I think there's kind of three challenges we really see on on kind of the tracking return side. One is, like, as you're growing, inevitably, your order volume, so do your customer questions. There's a kind of standard metric that I would definitely ask yourself. What's your ticket to order, ratio? Brands need to centralize this process and and really the way you can do that is by, you know, rolling out those branded tracking pages with real time updates so that proactive alerts can help you scale the support side of things. Returns are probably gonna get out of control is the next, common challenge as brands scale. Krista kinda alluded to this, like, manual processes and especially manual returns are not sustainable in terms of, like, processing. Growing brands, you're really gonna want a flexible automated return platform that really, like, handles multiple warehouses, like, through ship up, geographic locations, and maybe varying return policies. Example, like, a lot of times we see, like, during the holidays, there's a little bit longer of a return policy to kind of overcome any, like, anxieties on purchasing these products or busyness of travel. So kind of mitigating all those overlapping, initiatives. And then lastly, the other challenge is, like, inconsistent customer experiences. So, you know, unifying your post purchase experience really ensures consistency across different markets and skews. And all this kinda goes to improving, like, loyalty and lifetime value. Definitely. There's nothing better than ordering from a brand and you just know it will be the experience that you're used to. Okay. On to our last question here. So what is one piece of advice you would give to, apparel and accessory brand owners and operators navigating the rest of the year? Karina, we'll start with you on this one. Thank you. Yeah. What a doozy of the year so far and, man, one piece of advice. I think we're all gonna have such great pieces of advice. But if I had to think of just one, double down on personalized AI powered pre purchase support, personalized being, like, such a keyword there. I think we all just wanna feel like we are buying from our friend and that keeps us coming back. But when it comes down to it myself, even as a customer, like, I often need help finding, like, the right shade or if this color is gonna look good on me. Like, maybe the the perfect product combo or regimen, you know, whatever it might be. So if you're able to answer those questions in real time through intelligent, chat or virtual consultants, whatever is possible, you really help reduce friction, boost conversions, and cut down on some of those returns. And then this is my second piece. Sorry. I know I only have one, but work on really building strong relationships. I think that goes to the personalization. Like, build those strong relationships with your clients, those ones that are supporting your business. You can do that through various channels, support, email, SMS, whatever it is that's, like, owned channels by your brand. These really do become your best bet for building those one to one relationships because at the end of the day too, like, customer support isn't just support, it's also retention and everything that we're trying to do is, you know, really trying to build loyalty and LTV and and just success for all. Definitely. The personalization in is really key there. Michael, we'll pass it over to you. Yes. So I think my advice would be treat your post purchase experience like a revenue driver. So you don't want, you know, the customer experience to end just at checkout. Right? Use tracking. Use those notifications in returns as those key touch points to drive engagement, right, reduce cost, right, and boost retention, especially it's gonna be a competitive margin sensitive year. So there's ways to, you know, get into those open rates of emails. You know somebody's gonna be excited about their package. They're probably getting other packages as well. So if you can have those pathways kind of embedded and baked in at that layer, you're gonna be at a great advantage. Definitely. We always joke at Shipbob that, like, the only thing that has a 100% open rate is the delivery, and so that's definitely, like, the runner-up, your post purchase, you know, notifications of where your order is at. Adena, we'll pass over to you. Thank you. Definitely love the post purchase channel. I think it it there's so much more you can be doing with that channel rather than just providing a tracking number or just, you know, saying thank you for shopping with us, whatever. It it there's so much more you can do with that. I think my advice would be to and similar to Karina's answer would be to focus on building trust through personalization and also through building community. Shoppers wanna see how apparel fits, how it feels, how it looks on real people, not just your models that you're using for your product images. So collect and showcase those authentic reviews, collect visual user generated content in the format of videos and photos, incentivize your customers to submit that type of reviews, through, let's say, like, tiered coupons or discount codes or loyalty points. And yeah. Zero just continue to collect that zero party data to help customers find the right product for them. Highlight attributes like size, height, body type, and your reviews to reduce those returns, and increase on-site conversions. And the more personalized and community driven the shopping experience is, the more confident your customers will feel in you, in your product, in your brand, in your community, and they'll they'll likely come back and purchase from you again. Because we also know apparel, right, styles are always changing, trends are changing. You can go viral at a drop of a hat. So, you wanna make sure that you're keeping the momentum there. Definitely. And, Brian, how about you? One piece of advice. I would say, it's getting efficient. I know we all want to grow. I know we all want to get new customers. If you think about it, margin and your profitability is what you have to reinvest back into your business, whether you're reinvesting it into your product development, into new drops, or into your own marketing, which can sort of be an infinite growth machine for you if you do it right. The problem is with all the uncertainty that's happening, margins are a little bit tighter than ever. Everybody's changing warehouses. They're changing their their supply chains, whatever. There's a great book called Antifragile that I recommend everybody go and read. It's about building businesses that are sustainable against major changes around them in the macroeconomic environment. Right? So I think the number one thing you could do, yes, we want new customers. Yes, we want to make new products. All of that stuff. The number one thing you can do is be profitable and efficient with that, especially in your marketing. If you can find efficiencies, you can find more cash to flip into your marketing, which means more growth. Right? You can find more cash to flip into ordering more products or working with new, producers or whatever it may be that you need some sort of down payment for. Right? I know everyone's trying to grow, and right now this is happening because lots of people are running their credit cards up. They're they're doing buy now, pay later. Like, consumers still have purchasing energy. Right? And I don't wanna be a downer, but I don't feel like that energy is gonna last forever. So right now, being efficient, capitalizing on this kind of purchasing momentum that's going on, the virality that's still happening. People are still getting their credit cards out. They're still spending their money. They're using buy now, pay later. Consumers are still buying. This is a great time for you to build up that war chest by being really profitable, really efficient in everything that you do using AI, using zero party data, first party data, cleaning up and focusing your tech stack right on things that are the best for you. That's gonna buy you freedom and protection later when things change. Or you say we need to make a big reinvestment on our own growth, you'll have a war chest in order to do that. So growth at all costs is not acceptable anymore, period. I would accept a lower half year over year growth percentage if it meant that you had more money in your war chest to be resilient against changes like tariff changes, against incredible virality, against, your warehouse shutting down, against all of a sudden everybody overnight being like, we're not gonna buy anymore, and consumer sentiment goes in the toilet. You'll be prepared against that. Right? So, being profitable, focus on profitability is both a resiliency play and a long term growth and a short term growth choice. So that would be my advice. Definitely. I love that. And feel free to drop that book recommendation in the chat. I'm sure a lot of people would love to read that. And then last thing on the fulfillment end, my advice would be to use fulfillment to elevate your customer experience and not just to deliver, you know, your orders. Shoppers, again, expect fast, premium, and reliable services when it comes to placing orders online, and they don't wanna think about how their order got from the checkout page to their door. So the most successful brands we work with use fulfillment not just to meet these expectations, but to exceed them so their customers never think twice about where their order is, especially during peak season when you're gaining some new customers, you want to retain those new customers. And so, you know, impressing them off the bat with a post purchase experience is really important. And also on top of that, I guess my second piece of advice is to make sure that your fulfillment solution is connected to your tech stocks so that you can automate these updates that, you know, make for a smooth customer experience. That is all we have today question wise. Let me see if there's any questions in the chat. I see one here from Craig. For drop shipping, that usually takes longer to get to the customer. How many touch points is needed to keep the customer happy while waiting for their order? What is the best way to scale? And yeah. So I think on our end I mean, personally, I never get annoyed by notifications about my order. I find it very helpful. You can test out different things. I know some brands notify you when the warehouse is working on the order, when it's waiting for carrier pickup, out for delivery, and then delivered. Or you can do, you know, a couple of those touch points. I think it's, you know, test it out and see what your customers like. But personally, I never get annoyed by those, post purchase notifications. I don't know about anyone else. If there's not any other questions, I think that's all we have. This will this is recorded and will be sent out to everyone in the audience tomorrow, I believe, if not sooner. So, thank you so much for joining. Thank you to our panelists. And, yeah, anyone throw any questions in the chat, or your LinkedIn in the chat if you wanna connect. I think that's all. Thanks so much, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, Joanne. Bye.